Book Review #7

Prayers for the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book has a lot going for it. The fight scenes in this are peerless. I was taken back to the olden days when I used to read and then reread R.A. Salvatore books featuring Drizzt Do'Urden. In fact, I'm not 100% certain that Rakim Epps isn't really Drizzt (more on that later).

Also, though it's a bit odd, I learned a fair amount about the Muslim religion and traditional observances. It's a stew of modern and fundamentalist practices and really makes me feel like I should find an actual book about it, rather than a suspense-thriller, or wikipedia. Any suggestions?

Before you can read this book you must first suspend your disbelief. If you even read the back cover then you'll know it's necessary, and I read mostly fantasy, sci-fi, and educational theory so I'm used to it. Even so, I had a lot of difficulty. It took me till about 1/3 of the way through before I felt like Ferrigno had been able to create a world I could believe in, at least enough to enjoy the book.

Otherwise two glaring flaws prevent me from giving this book more than 3 stars. First, Ferrigno delivers characters background stories by forcing the main character to have long "remember when" conversations with each character. Really, I'm not sure how one goes about fleshing out a character's past without it feeling awkward. However, I think in mysteries such as this one a lot of that background is really unnecessary. The main character is a "shadow warrior," I'd almost prefer for his past to be a little more murky.

The second flaw draws me back to Drizzt Do'Urden. Rakim Epps' nemesis is another Feyadeen, this one an assassin. He's a pretty great character, and nearly Epps' opposite. A great Artemis Entreri character. But does their rivalry live up to that example? Sadly, no.

This book was a command performance. I gave another friend The Name of the Wind, and he gave me this. This was an entertaining read, and while I don't feel compelled to read any more of this series, if I were at an airport and need something, I'd certainly return to Ferrigno's series, at least if I couldn't find another book promising the death of Nazis and treasure.



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Phreelance Writers Forum - Love Letters

Last weekend I organized a drawer in my bureau that I’ve been using as a memory dump for many years now. Special finds include identification cards from 6 years of schooling, ticket stubs from every high school dance, and a sealed, unused condom, expired in 2002, which I think must have been from the first package I ever bought.

But the artifacts I was most excited to uncover were bundles of love letters. The first I ever received was written by my kindergarten-sweetheart after I moved from Mississippi to Massachusetts. The envelope is bordered in tiny hand drawn red hearts and they replace the dots on each “i”. The last batch was written to me at a writing residency where in order to encourage artistic isolation, the proprietors did not provide internet or phone access.

Every few years for the last 20 years some philosopher, writer, or technophile feels the need to proclaim that print media is dead and will soon be supplanted by digital media. Print media endures because people enjoy books not just as ideas, but as objects. Someday convenience and price may put an end to the print era; however, I hope we never reach the same point with love letters. Love and writing
love letters should never be matters of convenience. The extra effort helps makes love letters special.

But even if a lover were also a digital designer and took the time to craft a compelling digital billet-doux, it still wouldn’t compare. You can’t touch an e-mail knowing that your lover touched it. An e-mail will never be S.W.A.K. (sealed with a kiss). An e-mail cannot carry the scent of your lover. And on the darker side, if a lover spurns or betrays you, you can delete the e-mail, but that’s a cold and empty gesture, whereas burning a stack of love letters can be
extremely satisfying and at least pays suitable tribute to the passion the relationship inspired.

Check out more opinions and discussion of love letters in today's Phreelance Writers Forum.

Madness Much - Artifice Release Reading (Boston)

Join Artifice Magazine at the Boston stop of the MADNESS MUCH: THE ISSUE 2 RELEASE TOUR.

Date and Time:
Saturday, October 16 · 5:30pm - 7:30pm

Location:
The Enormous Room
569 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA
Created By

Readings by:

Elisa Gabbert
Ori Fienberg
Jeremy Bushnell
Andrew Farkas
M. Kitchell
...and others!

Get Out the Vote

Something strange is going on here:

We are being invited to vote for the winner of the Roberto Clemente Award, an award to the ball player who’s the most charitable, or philanthropic, or engaged in their community. Entering gives the voter a chance to go to the 2010 World Series, and what's not to like about that?

Well, first of all, the interface is cruddy. The only pictures are of the ballplayer. In order to see each player’s community service, you must first select them, which flips over their picture so you can read three sentences about the player’s deeds.

What? No media? Really? The site is basically designed for a quick popularity contest, and while that's as good a way as any to pick players for the all-star game, for a community service award it feels a bit weak. There’s really nothing about the charities and programs that the ball players are associated with. No video. No pictures. No quotes. No numbers. Seriously. Is anyone actually going through and reading about these? There’s not even a link to the organizations they support.

Meanwhile, Chevrolet isn't doing much to encourage a meaningful vote. The website encourages you to "Vote for your favorite player," not to "Carefully examine the off-the-field contributions of each player and decide who best emulates the selfless contributions made by Roberto Clemente and other baseball-humanitarians.

Really, there's nothing wrong with the public getting to vote for the Roberto Clemente Award , but if you're going to hand the decision over to the fans, at least make sure they have the information they need to make an educated decision.

Misadventures in Adcopy #5 - Special "News" Edition

Metro is a free, daily newspaper distributed along the public transit lines of several major metropolis. Since last year they've been engaged in a blitz marketing campaign for a company called Acushakti, which has taken all of the health benefits of a bed of nails, and mass produced it in plastic. They've had weekly ads, including several full pages, and one day when Metro had the front and back cover printed to look like an Acushakti mat. Honestly, I thought that was a nifty marketing ploy.


But what's not nifty, in fact is unacceptable, are the articles that Metro has published about Acushakti. I’ve seen three in the mywellbeing section since December, and while I know Metro isn’t the gold standard in journalistic excellence and integrity (I can’t seem to find Metro’s Journalistic Code of Ethics), the About section of their website states, “colorful features are presented without any bias.” I’m disappointed that Metro can’t recognize the inherent bias of using articles to promote one of their advertisers.

The New York Times, which does have an accessible ethical code, calls these “advertorials.” And what’s the news being reported in today's article entitled Study: Nail mats 'do tackle muscle pain'? According to one of the doctors cited in the article, Dr. Anette Kjellgren, “additional pain (from the mat) filters out the competing pain.”

Yeah, I know, like how whenever I have a toothache I’ve found that being punched, hard, in the nose, makes me barely care about the toothache. Leaving aside the conflict of interest, or the somewhat simplistic results of the study, since when is an unpublished “scientific” study newsworthy?

When the value of spike mats for pain reduction is confirmed in a study published in a peer reviewed journal, that might be news, at least for another newspaper that hasn’t sold been running full page and larger Acushakti ads for months.

I can't believe my eyes...

Today the fine gentlemen who post daily for Phreelance Writers and I went down to Hawkins Street in Boston to fill out paperwork for our job as Writing Consultants (read:Contractors) for Northeastern University's Foundation Year program. See if you can find the direction on the M-4 form (pdf) that seemed just a little off-kilter to me:

Book Review #6

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


When I was a little boy I often asked my parents to tell me bedtime stories. My favorite was a series by mother called, "Sam and Jackson Monkey." Sam and Jackson Monkey were monkey-brothers who loved peanut butter and bananas on toast, just like me.



I haven't told many people about my mother's stories for a couple of reasons, but the most important is that I felt ownership over those stories. They were created just for me, and they represent something so good that I've wanted to keep them sacred and protect them. Simply, they were too perfect to share.



I feel that this is the only possible reason someone has not recommend this book to me until just a few weeks ago, five years after its publication. I think every reader must be a little scared that something so good exists and they must also feel that same fear to share, the feeling that this novel had been written just for them.



Simply put Jonathan Safran Foer has crafted an utter masterpiece, filled with love, anguish, beautiful stories, characters, and interesting experiments. It is the best art I have seen come out of the tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001. It is nearly modern fantasy, and yet it rings miraculously true. It is an affirmation of the power of life, imagination, family, and writing in the most difficult of times. It is easily the greatest novel I have read published in the last ten years.



Part of me wants to clutch it to myself and not admit to anyone that I know it's out there. Of course it's a bestseller and many people have read it, but it's so deeply intimate that I feel as though it were written just for me.



But it's just too good. If you follow my reviews on Goodreads you know that they're infrequent. I read on average a few books a month, but I rarely feel compelled to review them unless they are very good or disappointing. This book is not very good, it is the best, and if you take one of my recommendations, this should be it.



It may not immediately become one of your favorite books, but I'm certain you'll have a thoughtful read with moments and ideas that will resonate for a long while.



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